Loïc Muhirwa

I design and develop AI applications at Google.

Before joining Google, I led a team of Data Scientists and Data Engineers for the Government of Canada; we worked on cutting-edge AI research, engineering, and consultancy services for both internal and external federal clients.

My academic background is in Mathematics and Computer Vision applied to Medical Neuroimaging and I spent the equivalent of 2 years studying Biology, Chemistry and Computer Science.

Outside professional life, my time is spent reading, writing, drawing and painting.

Projects Awards Art Philosophy Resume Publications contact

Portraits

the face and its various expressions

Figures

the human form in its various shapes and postures

Experimental Pieces

experimenting with different styles and mediums

Philosophy

Loïc Muhirwa

Much of my thinking about my personal and professional life has been influenced by modern and contemporary texts on a present-day understanding of morality, pragmatism, self-actualization and the philosophy of science. Most notably The Moral Landscape, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science and Designing the Mind by Sam Harris, E. T. Jaynes and Ryan Bush, respectively. Below I list some concepts I’ve been thinking about lately along with some emblematic quotes.

Science & Philosophy

I don't think there's an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beholden to philosophy. There are philosophical assumptions in science and there's no way to get around that. — Sam Harris

Abstraction & Mathematicians

A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories. One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies. — Stefan Banach

Writing & Maintaining Code

Code is more often read than written. — Guido van Rossum

Mind Projection Fallacy

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. — Anaïs Nin

Common language – or, at least, the English language – has an almost universal tendency to disguise epistemological statements by putting them into a grammatical form which suggests to the unwary an ontological statement. A major source of error in current probability theory arises from an unthinking failure to perceive this. To interpret the first kind of statement in the ontological sense is to assert that one’s own private thoughts and sensations are realities existing externally in Nature. We call this the ‘mind projection fallacy’, and note the trouble it causes many times in what follows. But this trouble is hardly confined to probability theory; as soon as it is pointed out, it becomes evident that much of the discourse of philosophers and Gestalt psychologists, and the attempts of physicists to explain quantum theory, are reduced to nonsense by the author falling repeatedly into the mind projection fallacy. — Edwin T. Jaynes

Privilege & Responsibility

When we consider the responsibility of intellectuals, our basic concern must be their role in the creation and analysis of ideology. — Noam Chomsky

Professional Projects

selected professional projects that I either led or made major contributions to

Diffeomorphic Registration and Lesion Segmentation of Neuroimages

computer visionimage segmentationimage registrationdeep learning

My thesis research considered a generative approach to simultaneous diffeomorphic registration and stroke lesion segmentation of neuroimages. Image registration and segmentation were integrated by parameterizing them as latent variables of a hierarchical Bayesian model. I also proposed an efficient deep learning algorithm to infer these latent variables.

Dynamic Topic Modelling

natural language processingtopic modellingdata visualization

I led a project in which we applied topic modelling to the Canadian Coroner and Medical Examiner Database (CCMED) in order to detect emerging death circumstances in the Canadian population. I was the sole developer and maintainer for the initial releases and the methodology was entirely designed by me. The system includes an end-to-end data pipeline and an interactive dashboard front-end.

Statistics Canada’s Responsible Machine Learning Framework

responsible mldata ethicsexplainable & interpretable

I am a major contributor to a framework that aims to promote responsible Machine Learning (ML) system development at Statistics Canada. The framework consists of guidelines for responsible ML development and independent ethical and technical peer reviews. In addition, I am involved in explainable and interpretable ML research to help support the framework.

Data Collection Optimization

economic statisticsdata collectionbusiness surveyoptimization

I made significant contributions to a data collection optimization system that aims to prioritize collection units (Canadian businesses) by optimizing the quality of the estimates (economic statistics) produced. This was a large-scale system that was used by 65 federal business surveys that cover four major sectors: manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, services (including culture) and capital expenditures.

Awards

2021 Agatha Chapman Innovation Award

Awarded to an employee for outstanding commitment to the development of innovative ideas or initiatives that advance the Agency’s priorities with respect to access, relevance, quality or organizational efficiency.

2020 Performance Recognition Award

Awarded to an employee for outstanding performance.

Resume

Download Resume

Get in touch

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Loïc Muhirwa

Portraits

Figures

Experimental Pieces